Nathan Wolfe
Nathan Wolfe
Nathan D. Wolfeis an American virologist. He is currently Director of Global Viral and the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Wolfe spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In 2007, he founded Global Viral with the goal of developing an early warning system for pandemics to monitor the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans. The initiative currently coordinates a staff of over 100...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth24 August 1970
CountryUnited States of America
The reality is: By the time swine flu got on the radar screen of global public health, it had already spread. It was already in the States, it was in Mexico, it was in New Zealand. By the time it reaches that point, you've lost the ability to contain it.
Pandemics do not occur randomly. From malaria and influenza to AIDS and SARS, the lethal microbes have come, in the first instance, from animals, especially wild animals. And we increasingly know which parts of the world pose the greatest risk for future incursions.
If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.
Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu - like the vast majority of new outbreaks - comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.
If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage - when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread - we can head off pandemics altogether.
There are commonalities among all the pandemics that occur, and we can learn from them. One commonality is that they all come from animals. And the other commonality is that we wait too long.
If you find diseases before they've really emerged, you can control them early on, before you get a major epidemic.
We know there are certain types of viruses that are nasty - influenza, for instance, is an area that is not a blindside. But a lot of viruses have come out of nowhere, like H.I.V., or to a certain extent SARS. Because we know we have the potential to be blindsided, we really have to investigate the unknowns.